ILL-TREATED TO DEATH

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 217, 1 June 1918, Page 8

ILL-TREATED TO DEATH

GERMAN SOLDIERS IN THE TRAINING CASiPo THE RULE BY FEAR I Published by the authority of the War Office, ami circulated by the lloyul Colonial lrotitutt.l

The basis of German discipline is fear, and that fear is olten taught by the utmost physical brutality. "This was well known before the war. Cases were not infrequent in the German Army of recruits who were driven to suicide by illtreatment; the punishments which Gorman n.c.o.'s were allowed to invent and inflict on their men were, many of them, barbarous beyond description; and while ill the British Army no officer would, or • ould, lay his hand on a man under pain of losing his commission, in the German Army officers could, and did, j assault their men with impunity, and in Uie most cowardly and brutal ways. It lias been the same during the war. To the German newspaper correspondents Iho German soldier has been "the hero m field grey," but to the n.c.o, in the training , camp, he has been only so much material to bo brutally beaten into jhape, just as to his officers at the front he has been, in that phrase which only the Germans oonid have invented, meralj "cannon-fodder." The ill-treatmeut of the German soldier has even led to public protests in Germany, and has been discussed in the Ueichstag, where speakers have comolained that the men who were acclaimed as heroes were "constantly insulted mid brow-beaten." What the German ■"oldiers suffer during tiieir training can be imagined from the letters of prisoners which have spoken of the happy relief it was to escape from tho life of German training camps lo life in the trenches. But tho most striking evidence, as often happens, is to be. found in an official document. An article in the Bremen "Buerger-Zeiteng" for Fehruary 22 explains in detail the distinction in military Jaw between "disablement due to service" and "disablement due to active service." Various forms of disablement are catalogued according in these two classes, and in the list of "disablements due to service" appears "ill-treatment resulting in death at the lands of superiors or fellow-soldiers." Physical ill-treatment by superiors, even carried to the extreme of death, ia looked iipon as so normal a thing in the life of the German Army, as so inseparable from the maintenance of,discipline, that it' figures, as a matter of course, in the list of those "disablements due to service" which entitle the wife to a pension. It is to be noled. However, that it dees not appear to entitle her to a full pension While a widow whose husband died on active ser••ice receives 400 marks a year (at prev.ar rates cElfl 11s. Sd.) and ICS marks is. Cd.) for each child, a widow whose husband has died through "illtreatment of a superior" receives only 300 marks (.CU 13s. 9d.), and only GO marks (M ISs. 9d.) for each child. (The purchasing power of the mark t"-da» is ■><!ss than half what it was.)

It is interesting to contra:\ Ihese fisures with the ranch more generous pen«ions paid to tlio widows nf British soldiers. The- lowest ralo in the British Army is 13s. 9d. a week (it increases as Iho woman gets older), that is, £% 15s. ;i year, or nearly double the German rerision. The allowance - for children is also much more eencrou=\ Five shil'mgs a week is paid for the first child, ■ 4 « 2d. for the second. 3s. id. for the third, and 2s. G<i. for each additional ••liild. That is, calculated by the year, ,£l3 for the first child. .£lO. 16s. Bd'.. for the second. JJB las. Id. for the tliird, :•'"] .EG 1(K each other child. Thus while a. British widow with time chi''iren whose husband has died through service in (he Armv, nets a yearly pension of ,£f>B 55., a Germnr widow witli 4 hree children whosp linsb->ncl has died <m active service jets £U ss. 2d.. »nd a tWman widow w\h three children

"•hose husband has merely been "illtreated to death by a superior" gets only £23 103.